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Media Create Sales: Week 9, 2016 (Feb 29 - Mar 06)

casiopao

Member
hey, i know this can sound crazy and i could most likely be wrong. just wanted to throw my 2 cents as to where i think sony could/might go in the handheld space if they don't want to abandon it.

Why do Sony don't want to abandon the market here? When not only it had become a money pit for them and also with how they are treating the console right now, u believe the fans will still give a care if Sony release another handheld here?
 

Takao

Banned
I do think Sony should reflect on the fact that soon they'll be the only hardware manufacturer without an ecosystem. Nintendo and Microsoft are both moving towards one shared pool of native content on multiple devices. Google and Apple already do. One could say PlayStation Now is their answer to that, but I can't see a streaming service of console games being a particularly attractive offer to mobile gamers right now.
 

sense

Member
....No? I love my Xperia, I play games on my Xperia, but it's first and foremost a phone. It's not something I care to use a controller with to play stuff on a tiny screen. If I wanted that I would just get said games for the PS3 or PS4 instead. I like playing Digimon on my Vita because it drains its own battery, and not my phone battery, so I can use both. Same with the 3DS.

The games I like most on mobile are the ones which can be played with touch easily, don't have a lot of voice and important sound fx, can be played in short bursts, and won't tank the battery.

i mean mobile is big in japan and it is a huge market and i understand the vast majority that play on phones just want time wasters and are fine with touch controls but if publishers want to invest money in this market and make big budget games they likely want to charge premium price and get people to move away from the mentality that phone games need to be 20$ or less or in most cases less than 5$ or free. sony could help publishers with the playstation branding to bring awareness to these games through multiple storefronts and provide an additional option for japanese publishers. people like options. it is an option for people that don't like touch controls and can just connect a dual shock 4 with them and play on their phone in planes or buses etc.... and minimize risk by putting it on ps4 or other platforms as well and increase buying options for consumers


But what makes you think they don't want to abandon it? They've shown every sign possible that they're withdrawing from that space completely.
They are still in the smartphone business and haven't sold it off yet, they are still promoting remote play and continue to update their app and making it compatible across multiple devices and this could be an additional option for them. i don't think they will go full hands on deck with this initiative and it is a low risk effort for them anyways because third parties are the ones that are most likely going to be taking the risks like usual and sony will just be providing them a platform to be able to make it easy to develop, sell and promote them across devices like they are doing with vita but will be with more powerful smartphones going forward that can actually run and handle these games better.

i may not have thought this through completely so forgive me if this sounds crazy lol
 

duckroll

Member
Oh man. It's like I'm having mobile gaming debates from 2010 again. This isn't meant to be rude, but I find it increasingly frustrating to debate this with people who don't seem to have the mindset of someone who uses a smartphone today in daily life, or talks to people who do. I've been experiencing this problem in MC threads (and in "Listen to my great idea for how Mobile Gaming can evolve" threads) for what feels like a century now, and it's always the same talking points which don't relate to reality:

- "mobile gaming is huge in Japan" - no, it's huge everywhere. Japan isn't that special, Japanese mobile games games just far more popular in Japan, because people can actualyl read Japanese.

- "publishers can make expensive premium titles and shift the mindset" - no this is not some untested theory that might have potential, it a strategy several publishers tried and burned themselves on years ago. It's a different market, there are different demands, you can't forcefully transplant one into the other.

- "people like options! some people prefer controllers to touch controls!" - sure but these people make up such an insignificant portion of actual users that catering specifically to them is not going to help you much.

etc
 

Hawkens

Member
It's fairly stark how much healthier the PS4 is right now compared to the PS3 at the corresponding point in its life. (2009)

For reference, the PS4 has had as many games open at >10k by week 10 this year (14) as the PS3 had in the first 25 weeks of 2009.

Also at this point in 2009 the PS3 had already blown through all of its big games for the first half of the year, leading to 25 weeks of poor hardware sales. Meanwhile the PS4 still has 4 big games releasing between now and the end of May.
 

dracula_x

Member
- "mobile gaming is huge in Japan" - no, it's huge everywhere. Japan isn't that special, Japanese mobile games games just far more popular in Japan, because people can actualyl read Japanese.
sure, it's huge everywhere, but still:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-and-android-apps-grows-thanks-to-china/
e5TVPNj.png


LuUR3q9.png
 

kubricks

Member
The Vita isn't going to suddenly take off with that support. It would be more of the same but at a better baseline. That is worth eating into the resources of a system that can, in my opinion, potentially reach or cross 100M units LTD?

Also, as it has been pointed out, Sony isn't going to release another handheld anyway. So, those customers will be going elsewhere by default.

It's never going to take off but its not as dead as people put it either. It is tagging along with the PS3/4 just fine at the moment and outsold them from time to time. The smart thing to do is to provide minimum support to it so Sony can at least have a presents on the handheld space and see how Nintendo response on next gen. What not to do is officially announcing the end of 1st party support to it. This move is just so unnecessary. I don't get it.

The 2nd part I do understand, which strengthen the idea of keeping the Vita alive (at minimal expense) until Nintendo's next handheld. The important thing is that once you pull out from the Vita market these customers will not transfer to PS3/4, they will go to Nintendo handheld and that's it.

Is that what they have in their vision? Putting all the eggs in a single basket that is called PS4?
 

crinale

Member
It's never going to take off but its not as dead as people put it either. It is tagging along with the PS3/4 just fine at the moment and outsold them from time to time. The smart thing to do is to provide minimum support to it so Sony can at least have a presents on the handheld space and see how Nintendo response on next gen. What not to do is officially announcing the end of 1st party support to it. This move is just so unnecessary. I don't get it.

First party support isn't limited to providing games though. It includes providing support for third parties, including providing libraries for less (or no) money, providing manpower and most importantly marketing (I see a lot of third party Vita games marketed by Sony). Heck I even dare to say the current Vita situation would be far worse if Sony diverted that third party games' marketing money to first party Vita games, in Japan at least.

The 2nd part I do understand, which strengthen the idea of keeping the Vita alive (at minimal expense) until Nintendo's next handheld. The important thing is that once you pull out from the Vita market these customers will not transfer to PS3/4, they will go to Nintendo handheld and that's it.

Is that what they have in their vision? Putting all the eggs in a single basket that is called PS4?

That is less likely to happen, so Sony managers think (and by looking at userbase for both handhelds in Japanese market I agree with them too).
 

Takao

Banned
I can understand not wanting to "waste" your internal talent on a dead product line (SCE Japan Studio has only ever shipped a single Vita game anyway), but I don't understand why Sony's not funding small scale external projects for Vita. Plenty of Japanese publishers are clearly finding an audience on the platform, so why can't they? Sony could even make them PSV/PS4 projects like literally every Japanese publisher not named Capcom, SCE or Level-5. What's the worst that could happen? You lose small amounts of money? You build/revive IPs that you could maybe use as leverage to get Vita's userbase on your home consoles?* Really grim outcomes there.

*Because good luck trying to do that when the platform's userbase is only buying software that has no guaranteed exclusivity to your brand.
 

kubricks

Member
Heck I even dare to say the current Vita situation would be far worse if Sony diverted that third party games' marketing money to first party Vita games, in Japan at least.
hm... I honestly am not able to comment on that, so...

That is less likely to happen, so Sony managers think (and by looking at userbase for both handhelds in Japanese market I agree with them too).
Judge by the sales split for cross-platform games on Vita/PS4, it's 50/50 and to Vita's favor.
Sony's managers are making a pretty big gamble arn't they?
 
When was the last time Sony actually did this? Not happened for most successful platforms, not happening for a platform that doesn't exist outside Japan and is going to be the worst performer of the company in the domestic market.
 

crinale

Member
Judge by the sales split for cross-platform games on Vita/PS4, it's 50/50 and to Vita's favor.
Sony's managers are making a pretty big gamble arn't they?

I agree but that's only 50/50 of the Japanese market and that's my point, so the gamble they're taking isn't that "big" in this regard. Nowdays any mass-market product that doesn' t sell globally has very slim chance of surviving. I know it would make Sony look good if they support the sinking product but there's a limit a company can do especially if that's a public company.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
- "mobile gaming is huge in Japan" - no, it's huge everywhere. Japan isn't that special, Japanese mobile games games just far more popular in Japan, because people can actually read Japanese.
I think people say this because the Japanese actually spend a lot more money per person on mobile compared to the rest of the world from what I understand (at least the US for sure). That makes it even more lucrative in JP right?
 

duckroll

Member
I think people say this because the Japanese actually spend a lot more money per person on mobile compared to the rest of the world from what I understand (at least the US for sure). That makes it even more lucrative in JP right?

Yes certain types of games are much more lucrative in Japan, but I don't think that has much relevance with the discussion at hand when it comes to trying to sell this audience traditional packaged style games at a higher upfront cost instead. :)
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
When we look at games like Rune Story - which would have unquestionably been a DS game if we turned the clock back eight years - it becomes self evident that re-imagining old formulas as f2p service games is endlessly more successful than just serving up something like a new paid Crystal Chronicles game on mobile.

This is why we continue to see traditional Japanese publishers trying to do just that with many of their franchises right now and no one is shipping paid apps.

Their efforts beyond that are about creating games in genres that are successful in mobile already or trying to find entirely new concepts. Everyone has moved on from trying to straight adapt the handheld model onto phones.

In other news, yet another Pokemon game was announced for mobile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNP3uG0_Jc
 

Cygnus X-1

Member
Oh man. It's like I'm having mobile gaming debates from 2010 again. This isn't meant to be rude, but I find it increasingly frustrating to debate this with people who don't seem to have the mindset of someone who uses a smartphone today in daily life, or talks to people who do. I've been experiencing this problem in MC threads (and in "Listen to my great idea for how Mobile Gaming can evolve" threads) for what feels like a century now, and it's always the same talking points which don't relate to reality:

- "mobile gaming is huge in Japan" - no, it's huge everywhere. Japan isn't that special, Japanese mobile games games just far more popular in Japan, because people can actualyl read Japanese.

- "publishers can make expensive premium titles and shift the mindset" - no this is not some untested theory that might have potential, it a strategy several publishers tried and burned themselves on years ago. It's a different market, there are different demands, you can't forcefully transplant one into the other.

- "people like options! some people prefer controllers to touch controls!" - sure but these people make up such an insignificant portion of actual users that catering specifically to them is not going to help you much.

etc

It's sad though. The vast majority of the mobile games do not have even remotely the depth and the gameplay comfort that handhelds provided since decades. Somehow it feels like a step back. Everything is sacrificed for immediate, as simple as possible gaming. It is quite disappointing that the mass market settles so fast to such low standards.
 
In terms of business models this is true, after the race-to-the-bottom of prices didn't leave much choice. In terms of gameplay and game structure, that's not true at all since you see all the time publishers developing console-like games.
 

zeromcd73

Member
It's sad though. The vast majority of the mobile games do not have even remotely the depth and the gameplay comfort that handhelds provided since decades. Somehow it feels like a step back. Everything is sacrificed for immediate, as simple as possible gaming. It is quite disappointing that the mass market settles so fast to such low standards.
Deep games can still exist, it's just not the big draw of mobile gaming. Most people shuffle through a game while using the internet and social media while going out and these games are just accommodating to their users taste.

I love deep video game experiences on my home console, but I've got rid of my handhelds and just use a phone now.This seems to be what the world is doing, except of course Japan is going one step further and not even buying home consoles.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I mentioned this a couple days ago in passing, but the new Tales mobile game that just got unveiled is clearly something that would have been a handheld spinoff instead five years back. It even uses a touch version of the Tales battle system and visually it's presented like a Tales game with a plotline and cutscenes:

Mobile isn't about reskinning the same DeNA game ad infinitum like it was in 2011.
 

Cygnus X-1

Member
Deep games can still exist, it's just not the big draw of mobile gaming. Most people shuffle through a game while using the internet and social media while going out and these games are just accommodating to their users taste.

I love deep video game experiences on my home console, but I've got rid of my handhelds and just use a phone now.This seems to be what the world is doing, except of course Japan is going one step further and not even buying home consoles.

I know, but that's kind the problem nowadays, isn't it? We live in the era of distractions and we end up being unfocused as hell. Social media made us hectic in checking them constantly during the day and as a result we cannot stay doing one thing for very long. This is of course a problem for games that requires that bit of time, but much bigger problem for work productivity.
 

casiopao

Member
I mentioned this a couple days ago in passing, but the new Tales mobile game that just got unveiled is clearly something that would have been a handheld spinoff instead five years back. It even uses a touch version of the Tales battle system and visually it's presented like a Tales game with a plotline and cutscenes:


Mobile isn't about reskinning the same DeNA game ad infinitum like it was in 2011.

Yup. Tales of Ray and Rune Story are games which if released last gen would surely be placed on handheld here. But with how well mobile is doing, it is not surprising seeing many middle class games moving to mobile platform here.
 

Cygnus X-1

Member
Yes certain types of games are much more lucrative in Japan, but I don't think that has much relevance with the discussion at hand when it comes to trying to sell this audience traditional packaged style games at a higher upfront cost instead. :)

I'm not surprised as the general public was more and more brought to think that we can give as little as nothing and obtain as much as we want, as long as coming from the internet. This includes social networks, applications, music, films, information and, relevant to this forum, games. Smartphone are simply an extension of this mentality.
 

duckroll

Member
I know, but that's kind the problem nowadays, isn't it? We live in the era of distractions and we end up being unfocused as hell. Social media made us hectic in checking them constantly during the day and as a result we cannot stay doing one thing for very long. This is of course a problem for games that requires that bit of time, but much bigger problem for work productivity.

It's not a problem, you just adapt entertainment to social needs. There's really no specific need for all types of games to be compared to things we used to be familiar with. Not wanting to play Chrono Trigger on my phone doesn't mean I don't want to play Chrono Trigger at home on a console.
 

hiska-kun

Member
GamesMaya Report

First Day Top 3:

1. [PS4] The Division - complete victory (good sales) a lot of beta testers with knowlege of the game purchased it
2. [PSV] [PS4] Summon Night 6 (combined)
3. [WIU] Zelda Twilight Princess HD
 

Fisico

Member
GamesMaya Report

First Day Top 3:

1. [PS4] The Division - complete victory (good sales) a lot of beta testers with knowlege of the game purchased it
2. [PSV] [PS4] Summon Night 6 (combined)
3. [WIU] Zelda Twilight Princess HD

So something like

100k > The Division > Summon Night 6 > 50k > Twilight Princess HD

I guess, SN6 should be down from SN5 and TP HD slightly up from WW HD.

PSP Summon Night 5 97,822 130,063 Bandai Namco 2013-05-16
WIU The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD 31,154 48,400 Nintendo 2013-09-26
 

horuhe

Member
This week's releases {2016.03.10}

[PSV] [PS4] Summon Night 6: Ushinawareta Kyoukaitachi # <SLG> (Bandai Namco Games) (¥6.800)

[WIU] The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD # <ADV> (Nintendo) (¥5.700)

[PS4] [XB1] Tom Clancy's The Division <ADV> (Ubisoft) (¥8.400)

[PSV] La Corda d'Oro 4 # <SLG> (Koei Tecmo) (¥6.800)

[3DS] Medarot Girls Mission: Metabee Ver. / Rokusho Ver. <RPG> (Rocket Company) (¥5.800)
 

Fisico

Member
That would be a massive decrease from Summon Night 5 if it's near 50k first week.

RIP in peace Summon Night franchise.

Well only thing I said is that it should be above 50k and below 100k, wouldn't surprise me if it's down from the previous entry but it will probably be between 70-80k rather than 50-60k
 

horuhe

Member
Rakuten Books Daily Chart (2016.3.10)

01./00. [PS4] Tom Clancy's The Division <ADV> (Ubisoft)
02./00. [WiiU] The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (Special Edition) <ADV> (Nintendo)
03./00. [PSV] Summon Night 6: Lost Borders <SLG> (Bandai Namco Games)
04./00. [PS4] Summon Night 6: Lost Borders <SLG> (Bandai Namco Games)
05./00. [PSV] La Corda d'Oro 4 <SLG> (Koei Tecmo)
06./01. [3DS] Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games <SPT> (Nintendo)
07./17. [WiiU] Splatoon <ACT> (Nintendo)
08./03. [PSV] Attack on Titan <ACT> (Koei Tecmo)
09./12. [PS4] Gundam Breaker 3 <ACT> (Bandai Namco Games)
10./04. [PSV] Gundam Breaker 3 <ACT> (Bandai Namco Games)
 

BKK

Member
We need a week on week chart to show how much worse PS4 is doing compared to the same week last year.
 

zeromcd73

Member
First Day Sell-Through (March 10)

[PS4] The Division - 80% Needs moar stock

[PS4][PSV] Summon Night 6 - 60% Both versions about the same but more shipped on Vita. Mainly only selling to fans of the series

[WiiU] Zelda Twilight Princess HD - 30% Hoping to move more units next weekend

[3DS] Medabots Girls Mission
5d913878.jpg
 

hiska-kun

Member
First Day Sell-Through (March 10)

[PS4] The Division - 80% Needs moar stock

[PS4][PSV] Summon Night 6 - 60% Both versions about the same but more shipped on Vita. Mainly only selling to fans of the series

[WiiU] Zelda Twilight Princess HD - 30% Hoping to move more units next week

[3DS] Medabots Girls Mission
5d913878.jpg

He says weekend
 

vareon

Member
I mentioned this a couple days ago in passing, but the new Tales mobile game that just got unveiled is clearly something that would have been a handheld spinoff instead five years back. It even uses a touch version of the Tales battle system and visually it's presented like a Tales game with a plotline and cutscenes:


Mobile isn't about reskinning the same DeNA game ad infinitum like it was in 2011.

Yeah, the mobage/DeNA parody "review" from back then has expired. My friends are genuinely having fun with Fate/GO and the likes.
 

hiska-kun

Member
The Wii U stock problem situation seems far from being solved. No stock in Tsutaya (Shibuya), Bic Camera and Yodobashi (Shinjuku). And no signs about when a new shipment will be send.
On the other side, pre-orders for the Pokken Wii U Bundle Set are closed at every store since the planned shipment is covered.

after 24 hours in the market the game has already been cleamed as a failure because a report from one gameshop in Tokyo

lol

To be fair here. The report didn't say the game is a failure. It only said that The Division was first and sold great, Summon Night 6 second (combined) and Zelda TP third.
Another user guessed 100 > The Division > Summon Night 6 > 50k that doesn't mean it sold 50k, but more than that.
And that should be accurate since YSO predicted 60k for SN6 Vita version and no numbers for the PS4 were shared. The PS4 SKU was behind Zelda according to them.
And this should match with the 50-100k assumption.
 
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